PSOH Band Ficlets Round II 'Pet Shop BoysREM'
by tigersilver
Summary: AU. This is a nine-tailed tale of Ten-chan. May it amuse you, as it amused me. He's a Trickster, this Fox Spirit, but even a Trickster can fall foul of another's lies of omission. TBC.


PSOH Band Ficlets II '**Pet Shop Boys/REM'**

"What's he doing?"

"Dunno. Sleeping, I guess. Been like that for a while now."

"Think we should tell the Count?"

"Nah. He gets like this sometimes. Leave him be."

"…Well, if you're sure. He doesn't look too good, though. Look at the way his eyeballs are moving – that's weird!"

"I said he's _fine_. And don't you go running to the Count with this, Honlon. Ten'll get over it – he always does."

The nine-tailed fox slumbered on, oblivious, tails tucked neatly around his pointy black-nosed snout, undisturbed by the bustle of the Shop, though Tetsu kept a weather eye on him occasionally. The Totetsu knew the fox spirit needed this time of rest and rejuvenation; that this hard sleep would restore Ten-chan's usual _joie d'vivre._

_Two days. Not too long_, Tetsu thought …._considering_.

Once, it had been a full five days before Ten awoke, refreshed and starving, and absolutely the same irrepressible tease they'd all come to know and, well, _love_. He never spoke of the time he'd spent asleep and oddly, no one asked. Tet figured it was just Ten-chan's way of recharging his spiritual batteries and didn't think about it too much.

Now, Ten-chan was unwakeble…and dreaming. He dreamt of forests long gone, of pacing wide grassy meadows silvered in starlight and populated with the race of mice; he dreamt of Victorian parlours, where even the chairs were too prim to show their bare legs, chintzy places where hunkering gilt-and-metal cages held captive countless generations of gaily colored songbirds. He followed the track of the summer sun as it pierced the sky above a lone, snow-crowned mountain, heard the faint crystalline crackle of frost beneath his feet, his breath puffing out before him, white clouds suspended in frozen air. He dreamed intensely, of all that he had been and might be.

And, in those half-remembered landscapes, the fox spirit saw again the tens of hundreds of people he had known, smooth and furry, clothed and bare, babbling in tongues that might've been forgotten or might still ring in the air, as fresh as the call of paperboy on the corner. And, of them all, those countless ones he'd loved and liked, hated or been indifferent to, he searched only for the faded memory of one particular person: a young man dressed all in fine white linen, long dark hair whipping the wind in a great silky swathe as he raced away, the red silk cord that bound it torn free, his exuberant face laughing merrily back at the young Lord Ten, who'd been left standing in the dust behind the boy's speeding feet.

One specific person, that one, a demon in angel's guise, he who had abandoned Ten-chan so long ago it wasn't even a proper memory any more – it was _feeling_, a hole in his soul, an unbridgeable gap between what was and what would come.

_Three days_, Tetsu observed. Ten had barely stirred, only twitching one of his tails more firmly in place and giving it an unconscious lick. Tetsu put a fresh bowl of water by his friend's nose and pulled the door firmly shut behind him, resolving to tell the Count himself if yet another twenty-four hours passed. Ten wasn't as young as he used to be, after all. None of them were.

The sleeping Ten spent uncounted moments recalling that one's face, reconstructing it in his mind, painting in the fine details with a gentle brush – the aquiline nose, the arch of thin brows over laughing, black-as-soot eyes, matched by lashes longer than a girl's and used just as expressively; the firm outline of the boy's mouth, rosy and smooth with the bloom of youth. His sweet mouth, which had uttered so many delightful promises of a future spent in his company – his mouth, the black orifice that spewed only wicked untruths till the very end.

It was not _regret,_ precisely, that Ten-chan felt, deep in slumber…_no_. More a wish to see once again what a fool he'd been, a happy fool, in the brief time before the young man had gone, the bright slice of heaven that still haunted his dreaming self.

As he had done so many times before, Ten-chan dwelt for a space in that dammed, stagnant pool of time, inhabiting the shape of his younger self, sleeping and eating and cavorting in the large white mansion on the river, populated with the elegant ladies and gentleman of an ancient Court, all as aimless as he in their leisure. The Emperor was in residence and thus the enormous house was a blessed place, scented with honeycomb and roses, lush with the summer's harvest. Ripe, too, with the bounty of the Empire's noble youth, sons and daughters of fine lords and foreign kinglets, all come to pay their respects to the Royal who graced the Jade River Palace with his divine presence.

But some of those fair flowers of youth came to be sold, bartered or given away, human tribute to the Emperor and his minions. The boy that Ten sought to recall was among them, a third son of some faraway, forgettable fiefdom, his feminine attributes and silken dark locks perfect for just this purpose, for the Ruler and certain powerful members of his Court prized pretty boys far above the courtesans and well-bred young women.

That was this one particular young man's fate, and even _he _had known it, though Ten-chan heard nothing of this immutable truth. Nor was he ever told, not till it was much too late, though there were numerous opportunities for the nannies and grannies and _major domos_ to apprise him of the fact.

Instead, they played, the two of them, harking back to the innocence of bucolic childhood, laughing and chasing one another through the gardens, swimming races in the shallows of the river's edge, sitting side by side in the rushes as they fished with reed poles and rice balls, caring not if they ever caught a thing.

The Lord Ten, as he was then, abandoned the beauties of the Court altogether within a day or two of meeting that one, choosing to be ever at the boy's side, and no one cared a whit, for it was fact that the Lord Ten would never despoil someone meant for his Highness's pleasure.

He was, after all, the Fox God, Bearer of Good Fortune, was he not?

_Four days_.

Tetsu closed his eyes, unsure of what to do. The moon cakes on the bamboo mat were untouched; the level of the water in the beaten copper bowl unchanged from yesterday. Still, the fox spirit looked as always – plump and healthy, his burnished fur meticulous, not a hair more insubstantial than he'd been before he fell asleep. There was no good reason to wake him, really, not so soon. But too long a time spent walking Dreamtime was bad even for the magical. Spirits faded when there was no one there to remind them of their existence – Tet had discovered _that_ for himself, in the wilds of Tibet. Ten-chan could not be left to dream forever, however much he might prefer it.

_One more day, then. No more. _

Try as he might, Ten-chan could not recall the boy's name. He'd known it, as well as he'd known his own, but so much time had passed that he could no longer bring it mind, waking or dreaming. He contented himself instead with recalling the casual brush of their shoulders when they rowed one of the Emperor's pleasure boats about the river's edge, giggling madly at their own incompetence, or the secretive smiles they'd exchanged during the endless Court banquets, or the gleeful sparkle in the young man's eyes whenever they'd played yet another game of chance and he, the great Lord Ten, graciously allowed the boy to win.

And he remembered well the sound of the young man's voice, those times when he'd haltingly shared tales of his barely outgrown childhood, abashed before Ten-chan's much greater experience – and, too, the excited tremor in the boy's light tenor on the eve of what was supposed to have been their last day at Court, when they'd made their final, private plans to depart together, for it was well known Lord Ten never stayed in any one location for long. Soon the Fox Lord would leave the Jade Palace, following the path of autumn's moon. That night, sheltered by the blessings of the falling stars, arms entangled in a hesitant embrace, Lord Ten never doubted that he would be taking his new love with him when he left.

But the boy had vanished well before Lord Ten had arisen the next day, packed up with the Emperor's entourage like so much luggage and whisked away at dawn's light, never to be seen again.

_The liar. _

The Lord Ten had been mightily displeased when he was informed his favorite was gone, and even more enraged when he learned the true circumstances of the boy's leaving. The Fox God had been tricked indeed, mislead by a will o' wisp of romance, courtesy of his inopportune enchantment with one no better then he should be, a young man destined to be prostituted and then discarded - to a small-town brothel or even perhaps the bowels of the Emperor's Great Palace, a eunuch guarding kitchen slaves - that was, of course, if the boy actually managed to survive so far beyond his purpose.

The remaining nobility - those that were not currently in favor with the Emperor - trembled before Lord Ten, as did the very walls of the Jade Palace, and then the Fox God was gone, vanished himself in a puff of brilliant white smoke and swirls of charged oxygen motes, the gardens all around blasted into brown death at his passing.

Nothing grew along that part of the river for centuries and everyone, even the Fox God, had avoided the place, till the Jade Palace was but humble ruins and a wandering spirit could no longer discern the paths where he had once walked as a God…with that one particular person, the one who dared lie to the Trickster and then have the gall to run away, smiling, apparently greeting his lowly fate as a whore with open eyes and welcoming arms.

_Liar. _

It was not _regret_, nor even remembered rage, that drew Ten-chan back to that long-ago time and place. It was none of those ill humours, ill befitting a foxes' spirit, but instead an urge to see once again what he'd been – how pure, how empowered - in the golden days before his one true acolyte abandoned him.

Having _seen_, having _remembered_, the fox skipped back over the broken byways and downtrodden paths of the past, nimbly finding his way forward, through dusky alleys and well-appointed living rooms, parkways and fire escapes, his padded feet sure in the fading light of memory. His mask was a smile, eerily similar to the Count's, his defense against any other who might lead him astray in the days yet to come.

Ten-chan had never fallen again, not once. Nor would he, for a God dwelt within, as he now so clearly recalled.

Ten-chan woke at eight precisely on the morning of the sixth day, yawning and stretching, nose twitching when it unerringly caught the whiff of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls in the air. He devoured the moon cakes and drank all the water, his stomach unbearably empty, and then went to join the others, the first in line for breakfast, smiling and wisecracking as though he'd never been gone.

Tetsu glared at the newly wakened fox spirit for a while, but he didn't say a word about it and neither did the Count, and thus Ten-chan had no need to resort to trickery of any kind. He was pleased with that, for the Pet Shop was his refuge, and he needed no awkwardness at this stage of his advanced life.

Months passed before the fox spirit felt the need to dream again, and by that time Pon-chan and Honlon and all the other curious ones had forgotten how they'd worried the time before. Tetsu hadn't, but then he was cursed with a sharp, nearly photographic memory. The Count only smiled and sincerely hoped his theory of reincarnation was correct and that the odds would tumble into the right one-in-a-million configuration without further delay, for the Honored Lord Ten might not choose to wake from his dream the next time.

TBC….


End file.
